While having Skyrim on the go is nice enough, the Switch could do with something a bit fresher in the Elder Scrolls department, and the upcoming port of mobile title The Elder Scrolls Blades certainly has a bit of that, plus its bite-size dynamic is arguably a great fit for a console with the ability to go portable.
You can’t go into Blades expecting full-fat Elder Scrolls though. This is no free-roaming RPG behemoth, rather it’s the familiar Bethesda formula funneled into straightforward paths, something akin to turn-based combat, and resource management that feels more Fallout 76 than Skyrim. It still looks very much like an Elder Scrolls title though, taking the aesthetic of the modern iterations, but the mobile roots are very much on show. As long as you go in expecting that, it shouldn’t be all that much of an issue, even if it is a little odd at first.
The demo on show at QuakeCon was quite brief, a taster of what makes up most of the game currently found on Android and iOS, but with the added wrinkle of physical controls thrown into the mix. The task is rather mundane, grab some wood supplies as you go from point to point, but it is littered with combat encounters along the way against wolves and Spriggans.
After picking up the first set of wood supplies, I’m confronted by a wolf and thrust into Blades‘ combat for the first time. the left and right triggers can be held down and released to match any gap in the enemy’s defenses, the better your timing, the more damage you inflict. You’re rooted to the spot during these encounters, but you are able to move your arms up and down to strike particular areas. You also have a selection of other moves at your disposal, including a shield bash that stuns enemies, and combining left and right trigger presses unleash a flurry of attacks.
It’s a basic setup, but it seems to do the job just fine. The Elder Scrolls is a fairly uninspiring series for combat as it is, so stripping it back doesn’t do it many favors, yet the sedate simplicity of it fits the structure of Blades well. You’re not meant to play for hours at a time, so repetition doesn’t impact quite as much as you might think.
For the duration of the demo it’s more of the same though. find some wood, fights some enemies, rinse and repeat. There are secret areas to find at least, offering up some juicy goodies for your character and your hub. The overall idea is to build up your home town area with these supply runs, so then at least there’s a real target to aim for, but in the isolation of a demo, you don’t get that sense of importance so much, in fact, in isolation, it just seems like a decent tech demo of a Bethesda RPG. more a problem of how some games just don’t demo too well rather than a real criticism of Blades, sure, yet it does show up the fact this is a very stripped-back approach.
Luckily, you can try it out on your mobile device now and get a better feel for things, and any progress you make can be popped on your Switch version this fall. I’m not sure having physical controls are really that much better than the current touchscreen setup, but for the more console-orientated among us, it holds a certain comfort, so it could well be worth holding out for that.
So maybe The Elder Scrolls Blades is a tad underwhelming taken as a traditional Elder Scrolls experience (even if you shouldn’t do so, it’s arguably difficult to separate it in your own mind), but as a free-to-play RPG-lite on the go, it fills a niche and looks pretty good doing it.